Prototyping

Inventory prototyping turns concrete GpuiForm registrations into GPUI form scaffolds. A generator should discover the expected form types, write the configured output files, and format them with rustfmt; the workspace example performs all three steps.

Enable inventory

Enable the inventory feature in the dependency graph that contains the form models:

[dependencies]
gpui-form = { version = "0.7", features = ["inventory"] }
gpui-form-prototyping-core = "0.7"

The registry describes each concrete form, its field intents, component shapes, storage policy, rendering capability, value binding, holder conversion, and stable prototyping suffix.

The generator binary must link the crate that owns the forms so its inventory registrations are present. In this example, replace app_models with that crate’s Rust import name. Inspect the registry before writing files:

use gpui_form::schema::registry::{GpuiFormShape, inventory};

extern crate app_models;

for shape in inventory::iter::<GpuiFormShape>() {
    println!("{}: {} fields", shape.struct_name, shape.fields.len());
}

Seeing the expected struct names is the first verification checkpoint. An empty iterator usually means the generator does not link the model crate or the inventory feature is absent from that build graph.

Generate scaffolds

Implement gpui_form_prototyping_core::FormLayout for the application’s target view, then pass each registration to gpui_form_prototyping_core::FormShapeAdapter::new(shape).generate_file(&layout). The adapter produces the component construction, subscriptions, holder seeding, rendering, validation, and conversion fragments used by the layout.

The workspace example is a complete generator. From this repository root, run:

cargo run -p prototyping

The command rewrites Rust scaffolds in examples/some-lib-forms/src/forms and mirrors them under examples/prototyping/output, then runs rustfmt. Success ends with Form generation complete. for each output directory.

Keep registrations concrete

Generic form structs should use #[gpui_form(no_inventory)]; inventory entries must describe a concrete form type.

Generated scaffolds are consumers of component-shape metadata. When generation reports missing render, value-binding, shape-path, or storage information, update the owning shape declaration and regenerate.

Troubleshooting